The Chrome app for iOS has a lot of advantages when pitted against Mobile Safari, and one of these plus points is the easy access to incognito mode in Google’s web browser. If you are using Safari on your iPhone, you will have to go to the stock Settings app in your iDevice in order to start a private browsing session. This means going a long way just to press one button, and has made many people turn to Chrome or other iOS web browsers. However, things might not be all doom and gloom for Safari, as the Cydia community seems determined to keep Apple’s stock iOS browser on par with its competitors. Privata is the latest Cydia tweak aimed at Safari, and adds the much-needed private browsing toggle to the app’s own options, allowing you to easily toggle on private browsing without having to leave Safari.

Privata is available in the ModMyi repo of the Cydia store, and you can grab it for your jailbroken iPhone for free. After the tweak’s installation, you can control Privata by heading to the stock Settings app. The menu just has one button, to enable or disable the whole tweak, and you might not have to go there as Privata is toggled on by default. The tweak does not add a new button to the main view of Safari, so it does not alter the web browser’s interface in any way. The Toggle Private Browsing button is added to the action menu in Safari (the one marked by the outward-arrow icon). This might not be as quick as having a dedicated button for private browsing on the app’s toolbar, but it is still better than having to go to the Settings app again and again. You will find the private browsing button at the bottom of the action menu list.

Privata is a fresh release, and this is apparent when you take a close look at the tweak. It has a couple of rather big problems. First, the action menu button added to Safari by Privata is a little buggy, and might end up appearing more than once in the list at times. Another bigger bug in the tweak (as admitted by the developer) is that the first URL opened after starting a private browsing session via Privata is saved to history. All the links after that behave as they should in private mode, and this is something you have to keep in mind while using Privata. So, if you are a fan of Safari, and often have to use private browsing, Privata is a tweak that you must have on your iPhone.